Burnt Toast
by The Undying Mongoose
Summary: A girl named Ace entered the Academy.  A Time Lady emerged from the fires of the war.    A tale of aliens, explosions, and tea.
1. Voices

"You don't have to do this," he said, his voice buzzing through the speakers.

She adjusted her microphone and strapped into the pod. "Yes, I do. Besides, I'm gonna die anyway."

"We don't know what being at the heart of the Moment will _do_. Our deaths might last for centuries. If you stay on Gallifrey, it will be quick. Well, quicker, anyway."

"I'm not leaving you. Never have, never will. Besides, it needs two people to fire it. You need me, and you know it."

"I just don't want you to suffer."

She'd seen him cold and manipulative, using other people like pawns. Why couldn't he be that way now? Why was he choosing now, of all times, to have a conscience?

"I'd suffer more, standing down there and watching you go into battle without me. No more arguing, or we'll miss our chance."

She wasn't sure what the pod had been made for, before he had commandeered it to carry the Moment, but it certainly didn't leave much room to move. It was better that way, she thought. Shut up in this tiny space, she had no choice but to focus on the task at hand. She flipped the temporal voidance switch, and tried to forget that she had failed her class on timecraft piloting.

The engine—it wasn't actually called an engine, but its technical name took much longer to say—emitted a steady hum, punctuated by a series of bleeps. She felt the telepathic circuits attempting to interface with her brain. "Sorry, not Time Lord enough for that," she told the pod as she took the manual controls. "I'm setting the coordinates now," she said into the microphone.

"Make sure you're _precisely_ at the edge of the time lock." He was trying to be calm, she could tell. Calm didn't agree with him. "A deviation of so much as a nanosecond will cause a misfire. We only get one chance at this."

"I know." The coordinates were set. "It's been an honor working with you, Professor."

"And you. Good-bye, Ace."

"Good-bye." She slid her hand down the ignition panel and pulled the spatial propulsion lever. On the tiny viewscreen beside her left ear, Gallifrey fell away. She could almost smell the artron energy in the air as the pod hurtled through space and time to its destination. She reached up and switched off the microphone.

"I love you," she said to no one, and everything dissolved into fire.

#

The students of Mrs. Merrill's astronomy class were the ones to discover the alien, as every one of them boasted to their friends for years after. On a late-night field trip to the quarry outside Meltser Colony Six, their telescope spied a streak of red-gold light, plummeting down to the planet in a fashion that was definitely _not_ that of a falling star. It fell to the ground so close that they could see the flames.

Mira Clarke, who always came in first in school races, set off at a dead run with her classmates racing behind her, while Mrs. Merrill shouted at them to stop that nonsense at once. Mira skidded to a halt so quickly at the edge of the burning pit that Tom Bowen and Ruthie Dylan both ran into her. "Watch it," Mira growled as she tried to detangle herself from Tom's rucksack. "You'll give me a percussion." If anyone noticed Mira's incorrect vocabulary, they didn't mention it.

"Sorry," both Tom and Ruthie mumbled, nursing their own wounds.

Once Mira was satisfied that she had _not_ received a percussion (or a _con_cussion, for that matter), she led five of the braver students down into the smoking crater. They did their best to avoid the small flames that had not yet died out, although Neil Kelly did scorch the hem of his trousers.

Mrs. Merrill had arrived at the edge of the pit, out of breath. "Clarke! Bowen! Dylan! Kelly! Knox! Carlton! Get back here, this instant! Let security handle this!"

"If we don't answer her," said Ruthie, "we can say we didn't hear." They all agreed that this was the best course of action, and kept picking their way down the slope.

At the very bottom of the pit was a blackened husk of metal, as big as the tilling drone that worked the fields at the edge of the colony. Mira held out her arms to keep the others back. "It's probably hot," she announced, with all the authority she could muster.

Without warning, a loud clanging sound came from inside the Thing. The children let out a collective shriek, and Jessica Carlton started running back to the edge. Mira and the others watched as a panel on the side of the Thing swung violently open and fell off its hinges with a loud crash. Smoke came pouring out of the hole, along with bits of swirling golden light that faded as fast as it appeared. And behind the smoke, and the light, came a woman.

More of a girl, really, thought Mira, though older than they were. She stood there for a second, glancing around at her surroundings, before tumbling out of the hole and crashing on the ground.

The boys seemed especially eager to help her, perhaps because—other than a few scraps of leather that clung to her shoulders—she was completely lacking in clothing. Mira glared at them, but she and Ruthie could hardly move the girl by themselves, so she had no choice but to accept their lecherous help.

Together, they pulled the girl away from the Thing, and laid her on a flat bit of ground a short distance away. Mira pulled off her jacket, exposing her arms to the cool autumn air, and wrapped it around the stranger. It wasn't much for warmth, and it didn't really fit across the girl's shoulders, but it was something. Tom's mother had packed a blanket in his rucksack, which helped to cover up the rest of the girl.

The girl's lips moved, and she mumbled in a language that Mira couldn't understand. "Erm, hello," said Mira. "I'm Mira. What's your name?"

"A…ce," the girl mumbled.

Mira turned to confer with her friends, just as two grey-coated security men came dashing down into the pit. "I couldn't really hear, but I think her name's Alice," she told her classmates.

"Right, step away from there, kids," one of the men commanded.

They watched the security men lift the girl and carry her gently out of the pit, then walked back to Mrs. Merrill and the rest of the class. Mira proudly announced to her fellows, speaking over Mrs. Merrill's lecture, that their colony was now host to an alien (of _course_ she was an alien) named Alice.

#

She woke up in a sterile white room, the stench of burning metal still clinging to her, and a very young voice told her that her name was Alice. That didn't seem quite right, but it would be good enough. Everything felt hot, from the air around her to her very blood. The girl who was now Alice sat up in the hospital bed. "What happened?" she asked, in the same coarse dialect that the child had used.

"We think you crashed," said the child, who was female, and quite dirty. "Don't you remember?"

"No…" But there was something, something very important. It was nagging away at the back of her mind, shouting at her to pay attention. If she could only remember what it was! Something she needed. Something that would make the burning in the pit of her stomach go away. "I need…I need…" A letter. It was a letter, only not a letter. Something terribly important… "TEA!" she exclaimed, so loud that the little girl jumped. "I need tea!" she repeated, before collapsing back onto her pillow.

Alice awoke to the sensation of scalding liquid sloshing into her mouth. A new energy surged through her veins as it burned her throat, fuelled by chemicals she'd forgotten the names of. Yes, that was better. She smiled at the little girl, who held the now-empty cup. "Thank you," she said, but the girl only looked at her, puzzled.

"I don't understand you," said the girl.

Wrong language. She'd had the right one a moment before, hadn't she? She didn't usually need to switch. And how did she know all these languages, anyhow? "Sorry," she said, adjusting her internal vocabulary. "I said, thank you."

"You're welcome. Do you remember me? I'm Mira. My friends and me, we found you."

"Nice to meet you. I'm afraid I don't really remember…" She paused. There was something definitely _wrong_ about her voice. She couldn't say exactly what it had sounded like before, but she was _positive_ that she was not the sort of person who rolled her R's like that. A panic that she couldn't define ran through her. "Mirror."

"Yeah, Mira. That's me."

"No, _mirror_. Although you have a very nice name. I need a mirror."

"Oh." Mira stepped out of the room for a moment, and returned with a small compact. "Here, this is my mom's. And the doctor says there's a bigger mirror in the bathroom, but you shouldn't stand up yet."

"Thank you." She looked into the little mirror, and a girl with dark, curly hair looked back at her. Now that was wrong. The face, the hair, it was familiar, but it just wasn't right. It wasn't _her_. "I'm someone else," she whispered to her reflection. There was a name for that, said a little piece of her brain. But that name, like her own, was locked away somewhere where she couldn't reach it.

The doctor came in then, and told Mira to give them a moment alone. Alice felt sorry to see the girl leave.

"So…Alice, is it?"

"I guess."

"Erm, this is somewhat hard to explain. Do you…do you know what you are?"

"What? Well, I'm what you are, aren't I?" She had the same arms and legs and head that Mira's species did; five fingers, a nose, two eyes, and—she verified with a quick glance under the sheets—all the anatomy that she was supposed to possess. But the look in the doctor's eyes made it clear that something was highly irregular.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. "We ran some basic tests while you were asleep, and, well…you have two hearts, for one."

Alice put her hand on her chest, feeling the rhythms of her body through the thin fabric of the hospital gown. A steady double beat, drumming against her fingers. Wasn't that what she was supposed to have? "How many hearts do _you_ have?"

"Well, just the one."

"Oh." That wasn't good.

"And your respiratory system…it's nothing like I've ever seen before. Your entire physiology is definitely _not_ human. Your genetic structure doesn't even appear in the medical database!"

"Oh," she said again.

"We're still cataloguing all the anomalies." He sounded _excited_. "I'm still not sure how you were able to come out of that wreck completely unscathed—you must have an astonishing healing factor."

"I…can still hurt." She was quite sure of that. Still it felt like there was a fire burning just beneath her skin, scorching every cell a thousand times over. But beneath it she felt something else, a twisting, hollow feeling. "And I'm hungry."

"Oh, yes, we'll get you some breakfast. You've been asleep for a few days, I imagine you must be starving. Erm, what do you eat?"

"Well, I don't know that!" she snapped. Where had that anger come from? "I'll find out when I eat something, won't I?"

"Erm, yes, just a minute, I'll go find you something."

It was quiet then, only it wasn't. The beating of her double hearts echoed in her ears, and beyond it were sounds that she was supposed to remember. Screams and explosions, beautiful music and terrible disharmony, all roaring in her memory, just beyond recognition. She pulled the blankets over her head, even though the room was unbearably hot, and pressed her hands to her ears. It did nothing.

"Alice? Are you all right?" Mira had returned, carrying a plate of steaming food.

She let the blankets fall. The girl's voice was a distraction from the noise in her head, enough that she could hear herself think again. "I'm fine. Is that for me?"

"Yep! Dr. Peters said you didn't know what you liked, so we got you a little of everything. There's bacon, and another kind of bacon, and sausage, and mushrooms, and a muffin, and toast, and jam, and chocolate. Chocolate's not really for breakfast, but everyone likes chocolate, so I got you some anyway."

Alice did indeed like chocolate. In short order, she also discovered that bacon was excellent, but the sausage was too spicy, and she liked white mushrooms, but not brown ones. Muffins were satisfying, but butter was better than jam. When she got to the toast, her hand paused for a moment.

"Sorry, it's a little burnt…" said Mira, when she saw Alice hesitate.

One voice among the cacophony grew louder at the sight of the blackened bread. Alice's vision grew blurry as the memory echoed in her ears.

_I can't stand burnt toast. I loathe bus stations. Terrible places. Full of lost luggage and lost souls…_

And among the words came the warmth of a friendly arm encircling her shoulder, assuring her that things would be fine while the world fell apart around them. Then there was fire, and screaming, and sounds beyond description, and smells beyond imagination, and her hands were on cold metal controls, speeding to the end of everything. And still there was that voice, from a time when things were better than they would be.

_And then there's unrequited love. And tyranny. And cruelty…_

And that voice had been beautiful, and horrible, and gentle, and angry, and everything that she had wanted to be, and it wasn't there anymore. And even though she didn't know why, or how, she knew she had done it. Because of what she did, whatever that was, that wonderful, terrible person would never speak again. And millions and billions of other voices, too, that she had silenced.

"No!" she cried out in a language no one alive could speak. There was a crash as the plate slid out of her hands and onto the hard floor. Then there was nothing at all.


	2. Hearts

**Warnings specific to this chapter: **Brief, minor self-injury.

**Author's Note: **I'm not one of those writers who will hold chapters hostage until they get more reviews. It's an unpleasant trick and reeks of entitlement. But _please_, if you have read and enjoyed this story, or read and hated it, or even read just the first line before thinking of something better to do, please leave a review and tell me that.

#

Alice the Alien (officially on the colony records as Alice Smith, but no one ever paid attention to those) did not speak another word for three months. The doctors called it trauma, while most of the colonists just called her a nutter.

Mira remained staunchly loyal to her alien, visiting Alice in the hospital every day after school and making sure that _no one_ brought a piece of toast anywhere near the room. "I'm sure they mean well," Mira said, as she did her maths homework on Alice's bed, "but sometimes people can be very stupid."

Alice smiled, and pointed at the second problem in Column Three, where Mira had neglected a zero. Mira examined her answer until she determined what error her friend had spotted, and quickly corrected herself. "Thanks. You're really good at maths."

Alice shrugged. It was her answer to most everything. She pulled her legs up to her chest to give Mira room to open up her science textbook. It was very old-fashioned, Mira had told Alice last month, to use paper textbooks, but their teacher was eccentric like that.

"We're learning about chemicals this week," Mira announced. "Do you know about that, too?"

Alice…started to shrug. Then, looking at _An Introduction to Science for Bright Children_ upside-down, her eyes widened, and she seized the book.

"Hey, I need that!" Mira exclaimed. Would Mrs. Merrill accept theft-by-alien as a legitimate excuse for late homework?

Hands turning the pages so fast that she couldn't possibly be reading, Alice ran her eyes through the entire chapter on chemistry. When she had finished, she dropped the book on the floor and sprung out of bed. "I have something important to do," she said—her first words in ten weeks. "Thank you, Mira."

And she ran out of the hospital room without shoes, dressed in secondhand pajamas. The doctors were so surprised to see their resident madwoman running down the hall that they forgot to stop her, until she had already reached the door. Mira followed, sprinting faster than she ever had before.

Mira finally caught up with Alice, after many wrong turns, in the secondary school science lab, where the alien was arguing with an irate teacher.

"I just need to borrow a few things," said Alice, trying to push past the teacher, whose name Mira didn't know. "I promise, I will put everything back just as I found it."

"Absolutely not!" the teacher said, bracing himself against the doorframe to keep Alice from passing. "First of all, we're having a study group in here. Second of all, I don't know who you are, but you're definitely not a student, which means you have no right to use our equipment!"

Alice said a few words in a melodic foreign language. Mira could tell by the expression on Alice's face that they hadn't been nice words. "I have a certification in temporospatial chemistry from the Prydon Academy of Gallifrey!" she shouted. At first, Mira thought Alice was still speaking in the other language—half of her words didn't make any sense at all. "I learned more in my first _month_ of school than you will in your entire lifetime, you stupid little man! Chemical processes of my creation have restructured entire _planets _and changed the course of _history_, but I have _no right_ to use _your_ equipment?"

Her face was flushed red from agitation, and Alice swayed a little. "Oh. Sorry, I think my emotional centers are still in imbalance. I'm going to need a lot more tea."

She reached out a hand to steady herself against the door, but missed, and collapsed with a small thump to the laboratory floor.

#

Her first fear, upon waking up, was that she had lost her memory again. Then, as her brain emerged from its fog, she realized that if she remembered losing her memory before, she probably hadn't lost it again. But she was back in a hospital bed, which seemed to indicate that something wasn't right with her.

"You collapsed," said the pleasant and ever-inquisitive Dr. Peters. "Mira says you were talking before."

"Yes, of course I'm talking." Why hadn't she been talking? Her memory was still a little fuzzy on that point. "And I don't need to be here. I just need tea. It helps me metabolize the excess artron energy."

"What in the world is artron energy?"

"Very important stuff that lets me do things you can't. Can I get out of here now? Oh, and I need clothes."

"We still have some more tests to run," said Dr. Peters. "We're still trying to figure out exactly what you are…"

"Time Lord," she replied. "82.3% Gallifreyan, 17.7% human, but 100% Time Lord. Only you don't know what a Time Lord is, because they don't exist anymore and you're not a time-aware species…"

"How can you be 82% of a species?" She watched his forehead crinkle as he tried to make the maths work.

"I never finished the conversion process. There was a war going on, you see—we were a little busy. And that's eighty-two point _three_ percent. But that really doesn't matter. _I _know what I am, and I have important things to do."

"You're not going anywhere until I'm certain you're not going to collapse again."

"I'm not. I just need tea, I told you. And clothes. And access to chemistry equipment." She had a feeling that the tea was the only one she was likely to receive. When the doctor's back was turned, she once more slipped out from under the blankets and started for the door.

"Sit back down, right now!" Dr. Peters commanded. "I'm not having you running off again. What if no one had been around when you collapsed? You could hurt yourself."

She sat down on the edge of the bed. "I know you're trying to help," she said. She could feel the irritation building again, the violence of regeneration sickness, and sped up her pace, hoping to persuade the doctor before the rage got too much for her to control. "But really, I am fine. My memory's back, you see, so I know how to take care of myself now. There won't be any more collapsing."

"But why did you go running off?"

He certainly wasn't helping to speed things along, was he? She tried to remember the impressive-sounding terminology that she'd learned in Basics of Telepathic Operations. Maybe if she made it complicated enough, he would stop asking questions. "There was an imbalance in my emotional centers after the removal of the psychic block on my mnemonic functions, which led to a brief period of irrationality and the emotional imperative to find a place my subconscious defined as 'safe.' Now can I have tea?"

Dr. Peters acquiesced and brought her a steaming cup, on the condition that she stay for a few more tests. She absorbed the free radicals and tannins quickly, and she could feel the patterns of her body begin to fall into order.

There were wires attached to her head as she lay on a flat table, and she couldn't help thinking about the Mind Probe. She reminded herself that this was not Gallifrey, and this species hadn't evolved such interrogation techniques yet.

"Now, just close your eyes and relax. We're just taking some basic scans, nothing to worry about."

Relax. Relax in the hands of doctors who had no idea how to handle her biology. It was a miracle that they hadn't accidentally poisoned her with acetylsalicylic acid, or mistook her binary heartbeat for symptoms of a heart attack. She called to mind the meditations that her professors had drilled into them, letting every system in her body slip into a calmer state. The mantra of her induction oath ran through her mind.

_I swear to protect the ancient Law of Gallifrey with all my might and brain. I will to the end of my days with justice and with honour temper my actions and my thoughts…_

It sounded so beautiful in Gallifreyan. She'd found the language lessons torturous at first, and unnecessary—wasn't that what translation circuits were for?—but she'd eventually come to love the language of the Time Lords, even the four hopelessly complicated writing systems. She alternated between mentally reciting the oath in English—the way she'd sworn it—and her halting Gallifreyan.

Even better than the language itself was the memory of the Prydonians who'd taken it upon themselves to make sure she'd learned it. There had been a professor, of course, and a tutor, but the memories that came easiest to mind were those of Ruslan and Maro, who sat with her at every meal and taught her the fine art of Gallifreyan insults. Her instructor had frowned upon it, as it was hardly dignified for future Time Lords, but it was the only reason she could remember how to form the accusative case, or the uses of the informal vocative.

They'd been her first friends, and very often her only ones. Between the three of them, they were responsible for seventeen major explosions on Prydonian property, and five on Arcalian. (The Arcalians had responded in kind, of course, which just made it more fun.) And when she'd begun the painful genetic conversion from human to Gallifreyan, Ruslan held her hand during each treatment, while Maro recited poetry.

They were dead.

Her euphoria at regaining her memory and her irritation at the superfluous tests faded as if they had never entered her mind. Earth was still out there, presumably, but Gallifrey and all her friends from the Academy were gone. Erased from time, as if they had never been there. And she had done it. Traitor. Genocide. Murderer.

She dug deeper into meditation to avoid the accusations of her own mind. _I swear to protect the ancient Law of Gallifrey with all my might and brain. I will to the end of my days with justice and with honour temper my actions and my thoughts…_ Calm. She could be calm. Like the eye of a storm, unmoved in the middle of turmoil. Everything seemed to slow, and for the first time since she'd arrived on the planet, she didn't feel hot.

Then there was beeping, and a frantic hand seized her shoulder. "Alice? Alice!"

She dragged herself out of the trance and opened her eyes. Dr. Peters leaned over her, panic in his face. "What? Are we finished already?"

"Finished? Alice, you went into cardiac arrest! Your heart—I mean, your _hearts_—stopped beating!"

"Oh. Did they? I didn't notice. Sorry, did it muck up the scan?"

"_Did it muck up the scan_?" the doctor repeated, incredulous. "You nearly _died_!"

"No, I didn't. Really, I'm fine. My hearts can do that." They didn't actually stop, the Time Lords had explained, but slowed to such a rate that most medical equipment could not detect the pulse. Although she was fairly certain that it wasn't supposed to happen unconsciously…but he didn't need to know that. She could take care of herself.

#

The chemistry lab wasn't an option, but she borrowed a lighter from one of the nurses on her way out of the hospital. It wasn't the same, but it was something. She sat in the corner of a disused field, setting individual blades of grass on fire. As she watched the flames dance and die, she thought.

She thought of Manisha. Whenever she thought of absent friends, Manisha was always the first one to her mind, since that terrible day in 1983. But there was something different this time. When she remembered the sound of the sirens, and the stench of the smoke, they weren't accompanied by the familiar surge of childish anger. All there was was a sort of dark and terrible sadness, smouldering away in the back of her brain. It was an emotion that she had never felt before.

It wasn't human. And that scared her, more than the War, more than anything.

She had changed. She'd been changed already, of course—that was the point of the genetic conversion. But the regeneration had driven those changes deeper into her body, so deep that even though she knew they hadn't always been there, she couldn't imagine being without them. Was this what it meant to regenerate? Was this what the Doctor felt, every time? How had _he_ handled it?

He'd handled it, that was all that mattered. And she would handle it. All these new emotions, new thoughts, and the new body that held them: she could handle it. She was a Time Lord.

She slammed her hand down on a burning blade of grass and gritted her teeth against the pain. It didn't hurt as much as she'd expected, not like other burns she'd had (and she'd had plenty, in her incendiary career). Higher pain threshold, that was part of it. Two hearts, respiratory bypass system, low body temperature, increased temporal awareness, various psychic abilities, and an infinite capacity for pretension and troublemaking. That was what she was now.

"I am a Time Lord," she said, for the second time that day. She'd grown used to the way the R's rolled across her tongue. It was a familiar accent—not hers, but comfortable, much like her new features.

She was probably the last. After all, the whole purpose of the Moment was to eradicate everything within the time lock: every last second of the Time War, compressed into a single instant and burnt into nothingness. At best, she was one of two. That was the hope she had to cling to, that just as the force of the Moment propelled her back from the beginning of the time lock, it might have sent _him_ beyond the end of it. If there was a chance that a single other Time Lord survived, it would be the Doctor. It had to be the Doctor. He had to be all right.

But he might not, an unpleasant thought nagged at her brain. The TARDIS's shield could have warded the Doctor against the excess energy that had saved her life, kept him trapped inside the time lock. He might have burnt with all the others. And she might be completely alone.

Wasn't this where she ought to be crying? She didn't cry much, she thought, but this seemed like an occasion for it. But there were no tears. Perhaps this body was done with crying.

Another blade of grass burned. She held it in her hand and let it scorch her palm before dropping it on the ground. She stared at the reddened skin in fascination. It was as if the hand belonged to someone else, a someone who had curly hair, and a Scottish accent, and was much too short.

Beneath her, the planet turned at an unimaginable speed. It was remarkable, really, that no one fell off. Gravity was a wonderful thing. How had she never noticed how wonderful it was? The more she thought about it, the more a feeling of euphoria overwhelmed her senses. She stretched back on the grass and closed her eyes, just absorbing the wonder of gravity, until she could no longer remember what it was that she'd been thinking about.

When she opened her eyes, the sun was nearly to the horizon, staining the field a vivid red-orange. Had she really been sitting out there for that long? She reached for a new blade of grass, but her hands found instead a scraggly weed, with wilted yellow-green leaves. Something in the shape of the leaves caught her attention, dredging up memories that hadn't quite made their way to the surface.

"_The family _Thandrani _can be found on most planets in the central region of Mutter's Spiral," said Professor Shalan on the third day of Improvisational Chemistry. "While the leaves can make for excellent nourishment, it is the stem to which you should direct your attention. When broken, it releases a pale blue, viscous secretion that is highly combustible under most circumstances…"_

While the voice of Professor Shalan—whose actual name was thirteen syllables, which was impressive even for a Time Lord—drawled in her ears, she uprooted several more weeds. She collected the 'viscous secretion' in a small puddle, on top of a flat rock. The lighter flared to life, its flame the same color as the setting sun, and Ace smiled.

Boom.


End file.
